Articles of the Day
E-commerce Plateaus As Web’s Purchasing Influence Surges - Does the Internet spell doom to today’s brick-and-mortar shops? No, says new research from JupiterResearch. Ecommerce will probably hit a wall in the not-too-distant future, eventually leveling out at between 10% to 15% of total retail sales, according to the report by Patti Freeman Evans, Jupiter’s senior retail analyst.
Yahoo’s Puzzling “Brand Universe” - After a decidedly unsuccessful foray into the content generation business (which led to the departure of several top executives), Yahoo got the bright idea to construct pages using content created by others. In an effort to exploit the Web giant’s good standing with major entertainment brands, Yahoo is building a “Brand Universe.” It includes popular celebrities, video games, movies and TV shows with dedicated pages decorated with nice graphics and aggregated content from Flickr, Del.icio.us, Yahoo Answers and other Yahoo properties.
Online Ad Spending Projected to Grow Nearly 20% - A survey of advertisers who control $6.5 billion in spending projects that the print and broadcast shares of US ad budgets will continue to decline in 2007, while the online ad share grows. The “Annual Ad Spending Study 2007,” from Outsell, shows that US companies plan to increase their online spending by 18% this year, more than for any other major media type.
Earnings: NYTCO Writes Down New England Media Group; About.com Revenue Up 50 percent For Year - Internet revenue accounted for 9.1 percent of NYTCO revenues, up substantially from 6.7 percent in 4Q05. For the year, internet represented 8.3 of the company’s revenue compared with 6 percent in 2005. NYTCO projects income from the internet to hit $350 million in 2007, up approximately 30 percent from $273.9 million in 2006 and $193.9 million in 2005.
@ AO Media: Forbes On The Relationship Between Print And The Web - Roger McNamee, managing director of the Menlo Park private equity firm Elevation Partners and Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief, Forbes took on the subject of managing the relationship between a print magazine and its online counterpart. “Too many print publishers and editors just took the print articles and just threw it up on the website,” Forbes said. “Print and the web are fundamentally different.”
Earnings: Google’s Good 4Q; Earnings, Revenue Up Significantly - Ending its day on an up note across the board by dint of its increasing market share in online search and advertising, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) reported revenues of $3.21 billion, an increase of 67 percent compared to 4Q05 and an increase of 19 percent compared to Q306. Operating income for 4Q was $1.06 billion, or 33 percent of revenues. This compares to operating income of $931 million, or 35 percent of revenues, for the previous quarter.
Earnings Call: Google CEO On YouTube Pay Plan; Nothing Formal Yet; Sometime This Year - Echoing YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley’s comments at Davos last week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said during Wednesday’s earnings call that the video-sharing site would start to share profits with uploaders “sometime this year.” According to Marketwatch, Schmidt said there was no formal program yet but one would begin “sometime this year.” Schmidt talked at length about YouTube, and said that the early returns on the acquisition are “very positive.”
Earnings: TW Execs See No Online Ad Slowdown in 2007 - Lot of digital nuggets strategically placed throughout the prepared remarks during the Time Warner Wednesday morning—and, of course, a lot of attention to AOL in this first call since the change in management and latest re-org. Advertising revenue was up 49 percent in 4Q06 for the third consecutive quarter of 40 percent-plus advertising growth. Growth was strong across all revenue sources. AOL brand advertising was up 38 percent, search was up 34 percent, and Advertising.com increased over 100 percent.
